Background Henry James' third novel,
The Europeans, first appeared as a serial in
The Atlantic Monthly in 1878. Set 30 years earlier in Boston, the story follows the encounter between a family of established, religious New Englanders and their European relations, whose alien, sophisticated ways dazzle some family members and scandalize others. Written as a light comedy of manners, Henry James contrasted the attitudes of the two camps: the Europeans sophistication and light-heartedness with the puritanical asceticism of their American cousins. It portrayed James's vision of America's trying to maintain its innocence by fending off European influences. By the late 1960s, a film adaptation of the novel kindled the interest of
Merchant Ivory Productions, a film company founded in 1961 by producer
Ismail Merchant and director
James Ivory. Merchant and Ivory were a couple from 1961 until Merchant's death in 2005. During their time together, they made 25 feature films, with Merchant's producing and Ivory's directing. Of these films, 19 were written by their close friend, the novelist
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. After early, modest successes with films such as
The Householder,
Shakespeare Wallah, and
Bombay Talkie, Merchant and Ivory suffered a lean period during the 1970s. Films such as
Jane Austen in Manhattan and
The Wild Party failed to find an audience. Their fortunes revived dramatically in 1979, however, when they took on adapting Henry James's novel.
The Europeans was the first of Merchant Ivory's period dramas, the genre for which they became best known. The idea behind the project began in 1968 when Jhabvala, a long-time admirer of Henry James, gave the novel to read to James Ivory. The latter had watched BBC television productions of Henry James, thought that he could do much better, and became interested in adapting
The Europeans as it could be done with a modest budget using houses of the period, natural locations, and a small cast with few extras. By 1974, Jhabvala had completed a screenplay, but production was delayed for years as financing proved to be difficult to obtain.
Writing Ruth Prawer Jhabvala wrote a faithful screenplay, lifting most of the dialogue from the novel. The novel is a succession of small scenes that do not build to anything particular. She added a scene of a ball at the Acton house, giving the story a pivotal point. The meeting of Eugenia and Mrs. Acton, an isolated incident in the book, is at the center of the ball scene. Ivory liked to have a big party in his film as a focal point when Eugenia begins to recognize that she is out of place there, both with the demure old women who sit in a room to the side and with the young couples on the dance floor. Jhabvala also provided a new ending in which, as Eugenia prepares to leave in a carriage that Acton puts at her disposal, Mr. Brand and Charlotte joyfully speak lines from a book of sermons.
Filming on set by the Barrett House with a handler Production took place between October and November 1978 on locations using interiors of the period in
Barrett House and Bullard-Barr House, both in
New Ipswich, New Hampshire;
Gardner-Pingree House and
Salem Maritime National Historic Site, both located in
Salem, Massachusetts; the
Lyman Estate in Waltham, Massachusetts; and in Concord, Massachusetts. The film is notable for its atmosphere of New England countryside in autumn with striking reds and oranges, capturing Henry James' sense of ambivalent wonder at the New World in New England. ==Reception==